The voice from the Sierra Madre Oriental
and the entrance to our
Quinta Tesoro de
la Sierra Madre

Monday, 16 September 2013

Tale of Two Days: Mexico's Independence Day, 16 September and America's Constitution and Citizenship Day 17 September

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So much has been written, studied, and said about the movement for independence from Spain on the part of the various races, classes, types, and conditions of people in the Colonial area, that little, if anything, is left that would not be repetition.

The Revolucion de la Independencia sparked up in a relatively unlikely place, a parish by the name of Nuestra Sen~ora de los Dolores, in a provincial, poor, and rustic Indian area named, un-romantically, Guajajuato, which in the Purepecha and upper Tarascan Indian language means Place of the Frogs or Mountainous Place of Frogs. It is good that at least it was not named Mountains of Frogs or Place of Mountainous Frogs. The little community and its surroundings is famous for mediocre semblance of the famous Talavera work more commonly associated with the ceramic and porcelain pieces and sets made in the Puebla area. But do not think that the present folks who live in Dolores Hidalgo would be offended that you might think that the Puebla stuff is "better"....because the Dolores people, 300 miles to the northwest of Puebla make utilitarian Talavera. It is good, well made, sturdy, and ready for daily use or for deployment at a better quality highway stop, downtown dinette, or a truckers' stop. It is made to be used, not to decorate a knick-knack shelf. If a fellow hangs around on the plaza, right in front of where Father Miquel Hidalgo y Costilla pronounced the "Grito (cry, or call)" to Independence, at 23:00 hours, during the night of the 15th of September 1810, he will certainly see five-ton trucks fully loaded with '' juegos (sets)" of service for six, service for eight and selections of plates, coffee and saucer, etc. passing by every five to seven minutes, delivering already purchased loads of their family-based production. The trucks go to all the big cities in Mexico, and to the border towns, even now, where wholesalers and tourists alike.

The people making the utilitarian talavera are a conservative sort. The bulk of them are still very much Indian by blood and proud of that fact. They are people who have been of one solid faith since the arrival of the missionary fathers, and they have, by-in-large lived that faith for the last 500 years. They are why the Mexican Revolution for Independence almost could have, would have, and should have been more like the American Revolution against the Brits. Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was a priest, it is true. But he was also quite a studied man...a form of Renaissance Man in many ways. He was also a pompous sort, who during the beginning of the revolution Hidalgo would lead in 1810 - 1811, spent considerably time writing out a fitting title for himself; it would have difficulty to-day, fitting onto a double-spaced eleven pages of letter-sized paper. Hidalgo was a large man, about 6' - 5" and approximately 260 pounds or so. He was a well-studied man, with many published treatises on topics as varied as histories of the Holy Lands and the proper and scientific manner to establish a vineyard, complete with step-by-step instructions all the way to the vat, bottle, and cuerca (cork). He had many diplomas, and apparently all were earned. He was a member of the nearly Athenian discussion groups around his homeland of Penjamo in what is now the State of Michoacán.

The Penjamo discussion groups might be something akin to the beatnik coffee shops of the very late 1950s and early 1960s (little did we know what that would lead to) and the thinkers both Orthodox and Radical were numerous, rich, and at times disposed to action. Much influence came from the Jeffersonian notions about the construct of society and the position of government in relation to the governed. The ardour of the French Revolution pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of both the traditional authoritarian structure of aristocracies and Religious rigidity with the "pharisees'' running the show, and the rush of anarchic freedom that dispelled fairly quickly the notion that Robespierre, through imposition of Fraternite', Egalite', et Liberte', had built anything of importance save for a defective mouse-trap. Those discussions have never ended in Mexico, or anywhere in Latin America, and they certainly have not ended in the United States of America. What was actually happening in Mexico during the 1790s and early 1800s was the final formulation of an attitude among the entire populace that Spain had had its moment, and had begun to fail on every front in terms of its relationship with its colonies.

Oddly enough, morality and pro-Spanishism, led to a collapse of Spain's control over Mexico...and then, one by two, all of the acreage that made up a place known as The Spanish American Colonies from Argentina and Chile all the way, essentially to Alaska. The Spanish Court had entered into a moral decay that found the King's Chancellor essentially taking the Queen to himself during the turbulent first decade of the 19th Century....while Napoleon was taking possession of all of Louisiana, that supposedly Bourbon Spain had held in trust...perhaps, one thought...in perpetuity....but such was not to be. Napoleon I, after taking possession of the massive territory (everything drained by the Mississippi River), promptly sold the property to the United States. While the Americans would have to fight and/or cajole to gain absolute control of the Ohio drainage area against Indian Nations, the French, and the British, the Louisiana Purchase was quite a bargain at 3,000,000 dollars. Then, the imposition of Napoleon's brother Joseph onto the throne of Spain produced the final shrug of the colonials' shoulders. The attitude of "If not now, when?" became pervasive throughout the intellectual classes of Spanish America.

Father Hidalgo went ahead with the rest of it after learning that one of their "discussion groups" situated in the elegant and sophisticated city of Queretaro, about 80 miles east-southeast of the Parish of Nuestra Sen~ora de los Dolores had been "discovered" by Spanish authorities. Enough evidence existed to arrest all involved, and for them to be executed, in spite of their high position as property owning, white, Criollo (pure-blooded Spaniards, not born in Spain), and at least nominally good Roman Catholics. Hidalgo knew from his own experiences with the Roman Catholic authorities in charge of the Inquisition that both the Church authorities and the Spanish Viceroyalty were essentially thoroughly corrupt and brutal. So immediately upon learning about the compromise of the "discussion group" Hidalgo decided his little place would be the answer to the other question, "If not here, then where?". These events began to unfold suddenly, about four or five days before the 15th of September, 1810. So, in order to divert the Spanish military response to the 'discussion groups' in Queratato, and Valladolid (Morelia), Penjamo, Puebla, San Luis Potosi, and even Mexico City, Father Miquel Hidalgo y Costilla gave the cry that was heard throughout Spanish America...and after a few weeks, throughout Europe. Suddenly, the sullen, expressionless Tarascan/Purepechas who had received patient, if paternalistic, instruction about everything from how to live to how to grow tomatoes and raise grapes to wine began to coalesce around the Church. Over the years, Hidalgo had demanded of them that all their children would have three grades of school, that they be at least slightly temperate. Farming diversification, ceramic, and other artisan industry, now commonplace in large swaths of Michoacán and Guanajuato States of Mexico, personal hygiene, religiosity, self-sufficiency, and a score of other positive characteristics....all started with a strong-willed self-assured personality named Miguel Hidalgo because he, a white intellectual, believed in these inscrutable Indians and their native goodness and intelligence. When his call went out from the belfry of his Church of Our Lady of Sorrows, on the edge of nowhere in the Mexican Altiplano, this writer is certain that Hidalgo was not aware that to-night 1,000 would arrive with clubs, rocks, and pitchforks, and that by three days, competent military talent in the form of Ignacio Allende from Valladolid (now Morelia), would lead a group of 20,000 towards the citadel of Spanish authority in the area...Guanajuato City, in the district of Guanajuato....still to this day...some joke, but seriously....the most Spanish city in the world. Spanish tourists are astounded by the quality of the archaic Spanish of the street performers who put scenes from the Man of La Mancha and other works of Cervantes, before the tourists while strolling in pantaloons and feathered caps. It is a mystical experience for national and foreigner alike, when visiting during the "Fiestas Cervantinas". The recitations and "rondalla" musical groups, they say, are much more in correct dress of the epoch of Cervantes than what they have in Spain, and that Guanajuato City is "more like Spain than Spain.'' On the second day after the "Grito", there was a massive turnout finally totalling over 10,000 from just the area around Dolores. This huge force, ill-trained and equipped, flooded towards Guanajuato, where Allende with his 20,000 would begin to put them into their best order of attack against a small but extremely well-fortified and trained defensive force of about 700 fusiliers and artillerists under the command of competent officers. The fusiliers and mosqueteros made fairly easy work of picking off the indiscrete volunteer Indians and Mestizo ranks of Hidalgo. Allende's people were trained enough to not uselessly sacrifice themselves. But during the siege of the Alhondiga de Granaditas ...the great granary where up to seven years of stores were kept it was known that the Independence people would have to neutralise the Alhondiga, completely. The stores, munitions, powder, medicines, and perhaps even papers and communications were too necessary to the effort to just pass up. But time was of the essence. Squadrons of Lancers could be in Guanajuato from two or three sources within three or four days of being notified of their plight by a stealthy messenger. The Revolutionaries were already on borrowed time.

The monument to El Pipila;, or "Speckled
Turkey" in Tarascan, This is a favoured
place for spooners and tourists and
vendors who frequently have really
nice seconds from the artisans of
the area...many different crafts
are represented.

On the 28th of September, well beyond the reasonable time limit for action, an Indian by the Spanish name of Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez Amayo decided to take matters into his own hands. He tied a large, elongated flat piece of stone...probably an iron and ore bearing 'laja de mina' (flat rock from a mining operation)....and stumbled as quickly and as upright as possible, as the Spanish poured lead down upon him. But he made the door of the Alhondiga no real worse for the wear. His task was not so much to break down the door, as is frequently stated, but rather to oil and burn the door from the outside, hopefully opening the door, and also setting afire the beautiful tropical red oak plank floor that covered the entirety of the granary's Planta Baja (ground floor). It is said he knew of the floor because he had been among the woodworkers who had so carefully crafted it and installed it for the Command.

After considerable effort, the plan worked and thousands of rough, ardent "soldiers" poured through the opening and slew every soul inside, Spanish and Criollo royalist sympathisers, soldiers, Indian employees and servants and Indians business people who might have been buying grain before the hostilities, women, children...everyone.

Blooded and victorious, Father Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende moved their flock together, and at every opportunity the Indians lost their discipline and simply destroyed whole families and peons who would defend them. Shopkeepers in the small towns, and their families were sent to the hereafter if there was the slightest thought that they might have Royalist sympathies. Shops and businesses were erased from existence, it was the true Occupy Wall Street revenge trip from Hell.

Hidalgo shepherded this rabble to the very edge of Mexico City. Ignacio Allende exhorted Hidalgo to storm the city with the imperfect but apparently effective "Army", now equipped with a few arms and banners proclaiming the Virgin of Guadalupe (what Episcopalians of old would consider the Apparition of the BVM (Saint Mary) at the Hill of Tepayac as the patron of the Army, and the spiritual guide of their victories.

Hidalgo fretted and stewed for a bit, not really wanting to allow his ragtags into the main urban area in the entirety of Spanish America. He had been disappointed that his "children" seemed to "forget" at every skirmish that they had to "love their enemies" ...leading to the old joke that the Indian, hat in hands, after his group had been scolded for killing and robbing at a very elegant and productive hacienda...the family was dead, along with many loyal peons and vaqueros....livestock slaughtered, roasted, somewhat eaten, the rest wasted....and when they had been sternly scolded, the one spokesman said, "Yes, Padre, but it is so much easier to love our enemies when they are dead."

Ignacio Allende, a Spanish officer and trained in the realities of both combat and the making of war, knew that however imperfect the army they had was, it was the army at hand. He also knew that this was the best and only time for a quick and total victory....setting up an inertia that the populace would embrace and help. With such a citizenry, agents of the Spanish could be weeded out, the Viceroy found along with his coterie, and they could be arrested and banished after first divulging the stores of gold, silver, and copper coinage and bullion.

Allende however only seemed to have total control of the "troops" during a actual fighting. Once the fighting was over....they seemed to revert to primordial instincts. And Hidalgo was too arrogant to be directed by a person who was not of perfect motive ....or something. It is known that Allende and Hidalgo did not "click"...and their personalities were among those famous "conflicted" types. This delay allowed for the Spanish professional army and mediocre to excellent officers to come up and confront the "army of locusts" and a battle ensued on the western side of Mexico City.

This was the beginning of the end for the Mexican Insurgents. Bravado, bravery, foolhardiness, not taking the enemy's abilities and assets seriously, and the failure to do the favour to their troops on the part of Hidalgo and Allende both, to disciplined them into a true phalanx for Independence. One can see the results by the tolls. There were 80,000 estimated troops under the command of Hidalgo and Allende. They rendered a terrible blow against the Spanish. Five of every seven Spanish effectives had been killed or wounded, but after winning the battle, two things blunted the advance into the centre of Mexico City. One, Hidalgo was depressed and disappointed with the carnage and unjustifiable destruction of life and property. The other was the recognition by the Independence fighters that even with overwhelming numbers the Spanish had destroyed whole companies of armed infantry and they had never backed down. A cold hand ran over the souls of the troops a well as the will of Hidalgo.

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Then with the next pivotal battle, after

a long retreat, fighting as they went, the forces of Hidalgo met with a force under the command of General with an aristocratic background, an excellent military and general education, and an officer who had been fighting Indians and small insurrections for a good while. It would be a different story in Jalisco, not far from Guadalajara at a place called Zapotlanejo (Land of the Kiwi fruit trees in Tarascan)

When all was said and done, the "locusts" had learned the value of discipline. Their problem was that it was not at the hands of the good priest or his soldiers....it was at the hands of the Spanish defenders. Outnumbered by about 20 to 1, Calleja used his better understanding of the task at hand, and encircled the passage of the rebel army and then employed very effective artillery fusillades that served especially to confuse and demoralise the once ardent seekers of Mexican Independence.

One can see on the map and in the chart provided the number of casualties that Hidalgo's "children" suffered. From this point on, Hidalgo's fortunes went downhill. He determined to try to make an escape to the United States, whereever that was, (actually into the Louisiana Territory) re-arm, make better plans, and return to the field.

Monument - Angel of the IndependenceMexico City at SunsetBeneath the column are invested the remainsof the Great Insurgents of the Revolution for Independence.

That seemed perfectly foolhardy, but for whatever reasoning that could be provided, it did not really matter, because during his flight to the north he was captured by Spanish cavalry in Coahuila, far to the north, and taken to Chihuahua City, where he was held until completion of his trials (civil and ecclesiastic) and sentenced to death. He was executed without priestly vesture or sign that he was anything beyond a bandit or a brigand, then decapitated.
His head was cured up and taken to be put at one corner of the high wall at the Alhondiga de Granaditas along with three other insurgents' heads. All the mortal remains that could be collected are interred in the Monument of the Independence in a glorietta on the elegant Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. And there is a brief story about the beginning of the end for Spain as the landlord of Mexico. It was a messy business, nothing like a 2 hour movie or even a detailed book.

The best that can be said, and it is something of value on behalf of both Allende and Hidalgo, of course, is that they did a great deal with a force of little military or diplomatic value. The Spanish officers in the field knew that if Spain did not act astutely and quickly with massive resources and will to win....that the social sectors, as racially and economically divergent as they were, would organise and grind Victory out of a master they had ceased wanting to serve for two hundred years. Madrid never really did wake up, preferring to entrap itself in hopeless and expensive entanglements in Europe.

More later about the 16th of September, 1810....the day it all began....but did not end. To-morrow, a brief word about the Constitution of the United States of America.
El Gringo Viejo

Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre

Click on the Gate to Enterour website which describes our fascinating, all adobe home and miniature nature preserve in rural Mexico. We are deep in the interior, nestledup against the massive Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range. The visitor will find explanations, descriptions, menus, prices for stays of three nights or more. You will enjoy scenes that show a pleasantlyrustic, retro life-style that seems to cure many of the ills of our visitors. Our place is also a birdwatcher's dream come true. And, best of all, we have only one guest room, with its own private entrance and private bath. You will be the centre of attention!

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OROG Number

What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, Earth Liberation Federation, or the French Masons. We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the burial sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver coinage from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico, 1863 - 1867. All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try not to torture our prisoners excessively.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

"Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

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"Be sure you are right, then go ahead"

"I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is."

"I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!"David Hawkins Crockett________________________________

And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Claus. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generousity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way to provoke humankind to goodness.El Gringo Viejo________________________________

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding horses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s.

His Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas, and my Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton, who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606.

Attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again. El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years. The Hudson Valley people were principally Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s. My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another was severely wounded and succumbed finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives.

A grandson of his settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain a Union that, oddly enough, would have remained closer if we had separated, and each gone the ways of their own yearning. The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. They wound up in the 2nd generation in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States. The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1568, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain enter into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos, in Palofox (Texas), Cerralvo, and Revilla on the Rio Bravo. Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period. My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy.LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years, cooking...not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff....and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.DISLIKES? Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions.

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice a costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc. Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.